Sami Knowles is a dancer: She's performed in S.F.'s Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers, as well as a handful of modern dance companies. But a trip to Haiti in 2009 changed her focus; she'd gone to study dance and drums and learned that she has a gift for drumming.

Later that year, Knowles sat in on a rehearsal with singer-guitarist Gared Moses, "playing only the floor tom and a cymbal." Moses had been having a hard time keeping a regular lineup of musicians to perform and tour, but the two clicked; they've been a band ever since.

Callow's sound is haunting and beautiful, with angst and tension balanced with primal minimalism. They refer to their music as "ghost western."

Was there a band you heard when you were young that inspired you to become a musician?

SK: Radiohead, 1998. Paris. Being several feet from Thom Yorke as his face turned red and veins popped out of his neck from singing so passionately. Being in a crowd of swaying bodies singing "Rain down, rain down. Come on rain down on me." That was the moment for me.

How does living in the Bay Area affect your music?

SK: The fog. I can spend hours watching it roll in over Twin Peaks. It never ceases to fascinate me. The ominous, mysterious, hypnotic quality of fog lurks around the edges of our music, for sure.

How did you come up with your band name and what does it mean to you?

SK: It's an uncommon and rarely used English word, so there's an inherent bleakness and mystery to it, which we love. Red didn't know what it meant when he chose it. It was really amusing to find out that the word means immature and naive. We totally resonate with that. (We are a couple of adults who have not given up on the dream, after all.) And it also says something about the minimal nature of our music.